Roger Ray, pastor “Meaningful Work AND Meaningful
Salaries!”
Naomi
Klein, (No is Not Enough, p. 127)
The
crucial lesson of Brexit and of Trump’s victory, is that leaders who are seen as
representing the failed neoliberal status quo are no match for the demagogues
and neo-fascists. Only a bold and genuinely redistributive progressive agenda
can offer real answers to the inequality and the crises in democracy, while
directing popular rage where it belongs: at those who have benefited so
extravagantly from the auctioning off of public wealth; the polluting of land,
air, and water; and the deregulation of the financial sphere.
It is not my goal to be
partisan. When we first started this church, just three months before the
history making 2008 election, we actually had several of the leaders of the
Greene Co. Democratic Party in our church. I celebrated the election of
our nation’s first black president with as much enthusiasm as anyone else at
the watch party. I was a huge fan of our Democratic senator, Claire
McCaskill.
Prior to that time I had
been regularly contacted by officials in the Democratic Party trying to recruit
me to run for various elected offices because, for a generation, I had been
writing opinion columns in the Springfield News-Leader that took our elected
officials to task for illegal wars, cuts to education and poverty programs,
environmental degradation, and for misogynistic and homophobic policies.
However, when we had
prominent Democrats in the White House and the Senate and I was critical of
them for illegal wars, undermining education and poverty programs, failing to
defend the environment, and for tacitly supporting misogynistic and homophobic
policies, I stopped hearing from the local and state Democratic Party.
Many of those Democratic
loyalist members of the church left and left so angry that I can sometimes
clear out several tables in the coffee shops where liberals hang out just by
walking in the room. That is possibly even more true today than ever before. As
you know, I tried to be a helpful part of the small committee planning our
city’s protest of Donald Trump’s visit to the Queen City of the Ozarks. I am
always eager to network with other progressives, especially the sort who are
willing to make signs and march on sidewalks.
We did a lot of things
well in this protest but there were some of what I would regard to be glaring
failures of logic and planning. I wrote an article in which I tried to discuss
what I regarded to be important points. I even used a good deal of
self-deprecating humor. But the reaction has been, to use a word we are not
supposed to use anymore, insane.
I don’t get to use my
philosophy degree very often but I would like to take a moment to give just a
quick lesson in logic. There is a fallacy called ad hominem. It means, literally, “against the man.” We say that an
argument is an ad hominem fallacy
when, in response to a stated position, rather than addressing the issue, the
respondent attacks the character or person of the messenger. In common parlance, we say, “don’t shoot the
messenger.”
Social media, however,
seems to encourage, even to reward ad
hominem, bringing out the monsters that hide even within academics and
community leaders. I dare say that almost nothing of my helpful and reasonable
points about how we might be better at protesting were heard but there has been
a riot of what I like to call “liberal cannibalism” in which people we might
otherwise think of as progressive allies have been busy chewing the flesh off
of my bones. I couldn’t care less about being the victim of internet gossip but
I am really worried about progressives’ ability to think, plan, network, and be
successful.
Missouri’s favorite son,
President Harry Truman, was often called “Give-em Hell Harry” but Truman
objected, saying, “I never really gave em hell, I just told the truth and they
thought it was hell.” Then, as now, Truman’s message was often lost in the
absurd attacks he suffered on his character and his family.
But what I find the most
interesting and simultaneously the most disappointing is how the issues that
Harry Truman was so adamant about nearly 70 years ago as he ran for re-election
are so very current as to make one despair about our ability to make progress.
This is a longer quote
than I typically use in the pulpit but indulge me for a moment to share a piece
of one of Truman’s campaign speeches and where he uses the words “Republican
Party” try to translate that as “elected officials” because there is not much
of merit on either side of the political fence. He said:
Well, I have been
studying the Republican Party (let’s just say “politicians”) for over 12
years at close hand in the Capital of the United States. And by this time, I
have discovered where the Republicans stand on most of the major issues.
Since they won't tell you
themselves, I am going to tell you.
They approve of the
American farmer-but they are willing to help him go broke.
They stand four-square
for the American home--but not for housing.
They are strong for
labor--but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights.
They favor a minimum
wage--the smaller the minimum the better.
They indorse educational
opportunity for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools.
They think modern medical
care and hospitals are fine--for people who can afford them.
They approve of social
security benefits-so much so that they took them away from almost a million
people.
They believe in
international trade--so much so that they crippled our reciprocal trade
program, and killed our International Wheat Agreement.
They favor the admission
of displaced persons--but only within shameful racial and religious
limitations.
They consider electric
power a great blessing-but only when the private power companies get their
rake-off.
They say TVA is
wonderful--but we ought never to try it again.
They condemn
"cruelly high prices"--but fight to the death every effort to bring
them down.
They think the American
standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the
people.
And they admire the
Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.
If the president of the
United States could state the hypocritical nature of the economic divide so
clearly, and he could state it in a democracy where the masses who are the
victims of this economic inequality can vote, how is it that nothing seems to
have changed?
John Maynard Keynes
succinctly describes the problem this way, he said: Capitalism is the
astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of
things for the greatest good of everyone. Capitalism didn’t invent three day
weekends, a 40 hour work week, paid vacations, sick leave, or retirement
programs…. That was organized labor.
It is difficult to
motivate productive work, innovation, invention, or denial of any immediate
personal fulfillment in the absence of a promise of some personal reward.
Capitalism holds out the promise that if you will work hard, delay
gratification, and save that you will reap a wonderful reward of economic
security if not wealth, and comfort if not luxury.
The problem is that when
the American Dream becomes American Wishful Thinking, when hard work, delaying
gratification, and saving doesn’t allow you to retire with dignity, have access
to health care or to ever own a home, then the promise of capitalism becomes a
lie.
With the right rules in
place, capitalism and its rewards inspired invention, innovation, hard work and
it produced the strongest middle class in the history of the world.
But when we vilify
teachers and police and auto-workers, all labor unions, for insisting on a
living wage and a pension that let’s a person buy Bermuda shorts, black knee
socks and sandals that they can wear around the retirement home in Florida
where they can criticize the government full-time, then capitalism is no longer
a gift, it is a lie and a curse.
The late Jewish Croatian
economist, Branko Horvat stated:
... it is now well known that capitalist development leads to the
concentration of capital, employment and power. It is somewhat less known that
it leads to the almost complete destruction of economic freedom.
Everyone who has ever
played the old board game, Monopoly, has a basic understanding of unbridled
capitalism. If you keep rolling the dice and moving through life in a
capitalist system, eventually one person ends up with all of the land and money
and everyone else is out of the game.
You can change the rules
so that all of the players have a chance to get back into the game, rules that
keep one player from quickly acquiring all of the land, utilities and
infrastructure. In truth, our nation has been up and down that
rollercoaster a few times in our 240 year history.
In our earliest days, Thomas Jefferson, one
of the primary architects of the nation, said "I hope we shall crush ...
in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to
challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of
our country".
The most wicked of men
will not, of their own accord do what is right for the poor, the
laborers. It was not natural market forces that brought slavery to an
end. It was not the invisible hand of the market that ended child
labor. It was not the competition of the marketplace that made the
workplaces more safe, that gave us the modern invention of the weekend, the 40
hour work week, paid vacations or sick leave.
It was organized labor
working in conjunction with spiritual leaders and visionary politicians.
When things go a little too well for a little too long, the unions become weak,
the church becomes irrelevant and politicians are sold to the highest bidder.
Franklin Roosevelt, who
had to rally America to respond to Facism, Nazism, Communism, and nationalism,
also found the time and energy to warn the Congress of the United States that
their constant caving into corporate power threatened to bring America as a
free nation to an end. He said, on April 29, 1938:
[T]he liberty of
a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a
point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in
its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group,
or by any other controlling private power.
It is not as easy to see
as it was in the days of Jefferson or even of Roosevelt and Truman, but there
is a continual erosion of democracy in our country and a certain evolution
toward corporate control of our government and its agencies. Weakening organized
labor has been crucial to this slow death of democracy and the rise of what I
used to call oligarchy but which is increasingly looking like fascism.
While I decry the
partisan divide as much as anyone, I maintain that the solution to this
debilitating divide is not to give in. Peace in the absence of justice is just
surrender. We don’t need to surrender. We need to get better at building
coalitions among progressives. We need to get better at telling our story. We
need to educate, to fill the media and the internet with logical, informed,
progressive views.
This is no time to give
up. To give our native son voice once more, Truman said:
“Given the choice between
a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the
real Republican all the time”. It is not up to us to abandon our values and to do
our best impersonation of a moderate in order to make other people feel more comfortable.
We are the prophets
now. We are Isaiah, Moses, Jeremiah, and Amos. We are the ones who
will demand that workers be given a living wage. We are the ones that
will insist that laborers who build houses get to live in one that they
own. We are the ones who will defend the immigrant farmer, the child
growing up in urban blight in underfunded schools.
We are the ones who will
prevent our economically disadvantaged young men and women from being recruited
to go die in a war for oil and military spending.
How can we defend justice
against the combined power of corporations and government. Ah, my
friends, you defend justice the same way you defend a lion….. you let it out of
the cage. You talk about it, you don’t give up, you shout amen until you
are hoarse.
It is not teacher and
police pensions that are threatening this nation’s economy. There are no
teachers with off shore accounts and apartments in Paris. Business owners
may cry out against the minimum wage being raised so something slightly better
than slavery but look, if everybody went to an Ivy League college and got a Phd
somebody would still have to nail shingles to roofs, make pizzas and milk
cows….. at some point we have to acknowledge that the people who make life
possible are people who deserve to have their lives made possible.
What I know for sure is
that the corporations and the government will never get this right until you
tell them and tell them often enough and loudly enough that they can’t pretend
that they don’t hear you.
Even when you feel like you
don’t have a voice, at least you can still say “amen” when you know that it is true.
